by deadwhitemale » January 27th, 2009, 6:38 am
Karen wrote: "From what you say about aversion therapy, you may have seen a psychologist/psychiatrist at some point?"
Well, I was forced to see one in my last year of high school before I quit. (I was forced to get this "treatment" if I wanted to graduate. I quit rather than go on being forced into therapy. I didn't want to graduate that bad.) That wasn't about my phobia)s), though (which were far milder then, anyway).
It was more about me reacting violently to what people like to call "bullying." (It's funny how what would be consideredd serious criminal behavior in any other context is dismissed as and winked at as "bullying" when it goes on in or before or after school.) It was considered a mental illness to object to being constantly harassed, ridiculed, mocked, threatened, and physically assaulted, and downright insanity to tey to fight back, however ineffectively.
Then I was court-ordered into therapy in my early twenties, after getting into a fight with a drug dealer the girl I was enamored of had left me for. I lost the fight, and "my" girl, and I was charged and forced to plead quilty, and sent to "rehab" or whatever instead of jail. I was struck by how hostile towards and contemptuous of any sort of religion the mental health professionals were. I was not even a very nice guy, but they thought a big part of my problem was that I was too religious. Of course to them, if you'd ever opened a Bible or given it a moment's thought you were too religious.
This experienced greatly furthered, if it did not complete, a process of radicalization begun by my public school experiences. (Bear in mind school attendance was legally compulsory.) I think I mentioned before that I am very far outside of what most people consider the political/ideological/philosophical "mainstream." I suppose I am more like a sort of extreme libertarian (with a small L) than anything else that has a formal name. But even that could cause confusion. Many libertarians (especially the doctrinairre Randians) are hostile to religion per se, and I am not. (They think all religion is always hostile to freedom of thought and action. I don't think so. In fact, all the greatest threats to freedom these days come from purely secular quarters.) Also, while I wasn't looking, someone seems to have redefined libertarianism to mean something I never meant by it. I called myself a libertarian for decades, and I thought it was true. But then one day I woke up to discover it now meant I had to embrace things I don't embrace, or at least am not sold on.
In any case, I set a FAR higher value on individual freedom of thought and action than 99 percent of the human race does. And, while I have many flaws, and am not even necessarily a very nice guy, I am often right -- I mean both factually correct and morally in the right -- about a lot of things most people are wrong about. I mean I seem to be able to see through a lot of things most people never question or examine for an instant. A large part of what most people just accept and believe without question -- which it never even occurs to them to question -- I dispute or positively deny.
You'd be surprised by what some of these things are. You'd be surprised how much hot water you can get into just by asking questions such as, "What is education? What should it be? What is it for?" (The discussion usually gets immediately dverted into a rather dull Evolution versus Creation debate, which doesn't ineterst me much, and wasn't what I was talking about. In any case, most people just assume that education is a Good Thing, and that everyone should be educated in the ame way and about the same things.) Before you know it, someone wants to serve you a bowl of piping hot hemlock to shut you up.
Also, some things seem really obvious and elementary to me, but most people deny them. For instance, I don't believe "everything comes from within." I believe a person's external, objective circumstances are very much a determining factor in how they feel about things. Furthermore, I believe people are entitled to their feelings about their external circumstances. If someone's external circumstances make them unhappy, I don't say they should just try to feel better about living in unhappy circumstances. I say, change those circumstances through concrete action.
However, I don't mean anything remotely like "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps," or "Root, hog, or die." I understand very well that many people's circumstances are at least temporarily beyond their control, that they lack the means to change them. For example, I am very unhappy with my present living quarters, but at present I lack the means to purchase (or build) better ones. And people blame me for lacking the means, and for being unhappy about it, as if I could just magically conjure the means out of thin air, or as if they weren't hemorrhaging away at a rate of about $6,000 a month.
All I can do is paraphrase a line of Gandalf's in Fellowship of the Ring: "I cannot burn snow. I must have something to work with." You better believe that the moment I have something in my hands to work with -- something besides snow to burn -- a lot is going to happen fast. I mean I aim to seize the reins and swing into action in a way that'll make everyones' heads swim.
But I digress, I think. I appreciate all the good wishes and advice (even advice I can't follow), and the prayers most of all. I know you all mean well, and I thank you.
DWM
"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." -- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim(1899?)